NEST Test (The National Entrance Screening Test) or NEST is a compulsory online/computer-based test for admission to the five-year integrated MSc program in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics, at the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar, and the University of Mumbai – Department of Atomic Energy Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences (UM–DAE CEBS), Mumbai.

NEST 2021 examination will be a Computer-Based Test (CBT/online exam)

Eligibility criteria summary:

(a) Secures a position in the NEST merit list. Please refer to page 12 of this document for the rules of merit list preparation.

(b) Passed the XII standard board examination in the science stream in the years 2019 or 2020 or has appeared in 2021 from any recognized Higher Secondary Education Board in India.

(c) Secures at least 60% in aggregate in the XII standard board examination. For SC/ST/Divyangjan candidates the requirement is 55%.

(d) Born on or after August 01, 2001. For SC/ST/Divyangjan students the limit is relaxed by five years.

Note: Necessary certificates supporting eligibility criteria have to be furnished only at the time of admission. Offer of admission is subject to verification of all original certificates at the time of admission/counseling. Certificates in support of eligibility criteria need not be produced for appearing in NEST 2021 examination.

Question type: The merit list for both the institutes is prepared using the best 3 scores out of the 4 sections and the section with the worst score is omitted.

In each section, for certain questions, there will be negative marking for incorrect answers. Some questions may have one or more correct answers for which marks can only be earned by marking all correct answers and no wrong answer. For NEST question papers of the last few years, refer to the NEST 2021 website (www.nestexam.in). The language of the question paper will be English only

Choice any 3 subject according to stream

Syllabus: The syllabus for NEST 2021 primarily follows the NCERT/CBSE science syllabus of class XI-XII. The detailed syllabus for the NEST examination is provided at the end of this document under the heading:

As merit list calculation will be performed on marks obtained in the best three sections, the ‘total’ marks for NEST 2021 becomes 150.

NEST 2021 Merit List preparation

I. Scoring system

1. In the NEST 2021 examination, there are four sections of 50 marks each.
   
2. NEST 2021 entrance examination will be conducted in two sessions and different sets of question papers will be used for each session. The percentile score will be calculated on the basis of the relative performance of all the qualified candidates in
   the respective session. The highest score in each session will be 100 th percentile
   
3. Merit lists for NISER and CEBS will be prepared separately.
   
4. During the preparation of the merit list, the three best scores from the four sections will be considered. In other words, the worst score among the four sections would be discarded for the merit list calculation.

Overall cut-off or Minimum Admissible Percentile (MAP)

1. In addition to SMAS, a candidate is required to score equal to or above a total Minimum Admissible Percentile (MAP), to get a merit rank.
   
   i. MAP for NEST 2021 is 95 percentile for general category candidates.
   ii. MAP for NEST 2021 is 90 percentile for OBC candidates.
   iii. MAP for NEST 2021 is 75 percentile for SC/ST/Divyangjan candidates

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